Bumpy Road to Bright New Days

“Time has left us older/but wiser, I know I am.” “Come in From the Rain,” the welcoming hymn to a solid longtime friendship from which those lyrics come, was written in the 1970s by Melissa Manchester and Carole Bayer Sager. Although Ms. Manchester’s original recording was not a big hit, the song nevertheless became a nightclub staple until it slowly faded out of fashion.

To hear Ms. Manchester sing it at Café Carlyle on Wednesday evening was to rediscover a ballad that for all its stentorian sentimentality still carries considerable emotional clout. And Ms. Manchester’s performance with two other musicians — Stephan Oberhoff on keyboard and guitar and Susan Holder on vocals and percussion — in addition to herself on piano, lent this avowal a touching intimacy.

That backup may have allowed Ms. Manchester more expressive latitude, but many of the arrangements used an awkward, tacky mixture of live and prerecorded instrumentation that lent the concert an undertone of cheesiness. A basic voice and piano performance with a cello or viola and no electronics would have been far preferable.

Ms. Manchester is still a gospel-influenced belter with a smoky lower register, and her versions of standards and old hits had a raw, devil-may-care exuberance. Making a beautiful sound mattered much less than being real and down to earth. Ms. Manchester tried with mixed results to refresh familiar material. There was a hushed, slowed-up rendition of “Be My Baby,” a Latin-flavored medley of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter standards, and a three-part a cappella rendition of “Something Wonderful” from “The King and I.”

When Ms. Manchester sang a recent original song, “I Know Who I Am,” written with Joanna Cotton and Greg Barnhill, you sensed that she had traveled a long road filled with potholes to achieve her equilibrium and high spirits. In the language of the show’s title, “You Gotta Love the Life.”

Melissa Manchester performs through next Saturday at Café Carlyle at the Carlyle Hotel, 35 East 76th Street, Manhattan; 212-744-1600.